


but when you build your house (then call me home)

by Ymae



Series: Sanvers Week 2019 - What if? [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex gets powers, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kara and J'onn are mentioned, Maggie's POV, Romance, Sanvers Week, Sanvers are married, Sanvers didn't break up, angst-ish, sweet protective Sanvers, the aftermath of Alex getting powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymae/pseuds/Ymae
Summary: After having discovered surprising new powers while saving her sister, Alex retreats to an abandoned rooftop. Maggie, of course, won't let her suffer alone.





	but when you build your house (then call me home)

The wind blows over the roof, pushing Maggie closer to the edge, closer to the city lights that are forming an ocean far underneath the rooftop.

Maggie treads carefully atop the gray pebbles that cover the whole of the rooftop’s surface. It’s cold, and if she weren’t desperately searching to steady herself through her outstretched arms, she’d wrap them around herself to fend off the wind that’s driving pricks of ice under her blazer.

All that plays quietly in some unconscious part of her mind. Everything else, Maggie’s eyes, her attention, they’re all focused on the shadow figure crouching at the edge of the rooftop, far too close to a dangerous fall.

“Alex,” she says quietly, careful not to startle her. The air is cool, and darkening, and unforgiving. Just two days ago, her wife had been carefree as she’d ever been, unburdened. Happy, almost. They’d been happy, through one crisis and the next, with game nights with Kara and J’onn, a family, sticking together tight. Two humans, two aliens, and none of that mattered.

Now, it’s Kara and J’onn in Alex’s apartment, scared, waiting for Alex and Maggie to return. Now it’s Maggie, cautiously walking over the top of an abandoned house to meet with Alex.

Two aliens, one human, and Alex is… what?

But no, Maggie reminds herself, as her wife still doesn’t turn around. It doesn’t matter _what_ Alex is now, exactly, as long as Maggie knows _who_ she is. And she does. They’ve been married for two years. 

“You came,” Alex whispers, finally turning around. Her eyes are big and dark in the fading sunlight, vulnerable, and Maggie doesn’t care about caution anymore, runs to Alex and drops on her knees beside her on the edge of the rooftop.

“Of course, sweetie,” she says, her shaking hands reaching out to Alex. “Of course I came. You didn’t need to run away in the first place.”

“But I did,” Alex replies, taking Maggie’s hands into her own to warm them up. “I finally understand now how Kara must have felt back when we were little, having all those powers and no control. She must have been so scared.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being scared,” Maggie whispers. “We established that a long time ago, right, baby?”

Alex smiles a little, but then she shakes her head. “You don’t understand, Mags,” she pleads. “When we were little… things… used to happen. One time Kara accidentally broke my finger when I asked her to help me get a ring off. And she’d had her powers for  _months_ already. Imagine what I could do now? I don’t know anything about my powers. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know why I have them. Imagine who I could hurt?” She slides away a little, pushes Maggie’s hands off her. Maggie doesn’t know what to do with them. They’re cold, so she puts them into her jeans pockets, but it seems so wrong. 

She just wants to touch Alex, to lean in and kiss her, but there’s no place for intimacy in Alex’s fearful eyes.

“I shouldn’t have told you to come here,” Alex says. “I don’t know why I did.” She turns away. “You should go.”

“You know I won’t,” Maggie says softly. “Alex, come on, look at me. You know I’m better than that, okay? I won’t run from you. Come home? Please?”

Alex doesn’t answer, but she’s trembling violently, and when Maggie licks her lips, it’s like she can feel Alex’s tears on them. There’s so much fear radiating off her wife, so much loneliness that she’s put on herself, that Maggie doesn’t know what to do with it.

Look, she  _knows_ Alex. She’s sat with her through the good times and the bad ones, through an almost-breakup, at least a hundred kidnappings, torture, PTSD, survivor’s guilt, issues with self-control and self-loathing, with not being good enough, all of it. They’ve gotten through it, and they’ve analyzed the hell out of themselves. Isolation is their biggest enemy, has always been. Alex knows that. 

And now there’s a new problem, and suddenly everything comes bubbling up again.

“Alex,” she calls out when the silence stretches out too long, and Alex’s balance shifts dangerously close to the edge. Maggie knows she isn’t _trying_ to be suicidal, but when Alex is upset, she gets reckless. 

There’s no answer, but by Alex’s stiff shoulders, Maggie knows she’s listening. “Hey. Do you really think you can hurt Kara? She’s  _literally_ invincible. She can take care of herself.” 

“Except for when she can’t,” Alex sniffles, almost too quiet to hear, and Maggie sighs in relief at hearing her voice.

“For those times, she has you,” Maggie says softly. “You’ve always watched out for her, even when the stakes seemed too high and everything was hopeless. Like yesterday, right? You saved her, Alex. Her powers are still blown out. She would’ve fallen off that bridge if you hadn’t activated your—”

“My _what_?” Alex snaps, turning around sharply. There’s a split second where all Maggie sees is the horror in Alex’s eyes, before she notices how her balance is all off, how Alex’s hands are grasping for a stability that isn’t there, and before Maggie can make a _sound,_ she’s tumbling over the edge. 

“Alex!” Maggie screams, leaping to her feet and to the place where Alex lost her footing. She looks over the edge, her mind playing images of Alex broken, Alex bleeding, Alex lying on the concrete ground twenty feet below, eyes open, unseeing.

Her mind plays and replays even as her eyes catch on to reality.

Alex is standing close enough that, if Maggie were to lie on her stomach and stretch her arms in her direction, their fingertips could touch. Alex is standing on a platform of concrete that hadn’t been there before, next to a nicely melted hole in the building’s walls.

The concrete slowly drips back into the wall, forms a rigid ladder, which Alex’s fingers grip tightly, until she steps back onto the roof with ease. The ladder immediately melts away, mends the hole in the wall.

The earth gives a low, deep rumble, and the abandoned, decrepit building twists. With Alex and Maggie on top, standing next to each other, their eyes so deep in wonder no words leave their mouths, the building straightens, the cracks in the walls disappear, the broken windows form solid new panes, the plants growing out of the concrete melt into the ground, become fresh grass, flowers.

In a few minutes, the broken building stands proud and new.

Alex clears her throat, her hands still shaking, clutching Maggie’s hands tight through… through…

Maggie turns around to face her, and can’t help herself. They’ve just borne witness to one of the most formidable displays of raw power Maggie has ever seen, but Maggie turns around to look at her wife, and she can’t help but smirk.

She’s come all the way out here to tell Alex why it’s completely safe for her to come home, but yeah, it’s so very  _Danvers_ to deliver the proof before the thesis. 

“So there’s something I wanted to tell you,” Maggie says, running her hand over Alex’s shoulder, her worn out greenish leather jacket. “Kara was lying next to that giant-ass hole in the bridge, the one the alien ripped into it, yeah? And you thought you’d somehow made her levitate so she didn’t fall through, and when you saw she was alright, you fled?”

Alex looks at her, as though she’s affronted Maggie’s mouth works normally, and deeply puzzled why this is what she chooses to talk about now.

“I didn’t flee,” she grumbles, but her eyes are fixed on Maggie, and she leans down to smell her dust-covered hair. There’s no way in the world Maggie smells good right now, covered in concrete and dirt as she is, but Alex looks peaceful, so she doesn’t say anything. “I retracted myself from the situation so no one else would get hurt—”

“ _Anyway,”_ Maggie interrupts her wife, leaning back a bit, so they’re facing each other again. “I’m sorry to disappoint, but you don’t actually have long-distance-levitating powers or anything. You just... mended that hole, like you just did with this whole mansion.”

Confusion streaks Alex’s face like finger paint. “Okay?”

“So, J’onn said he’d seen this before, on Mars. There were cases of Martians who suddenly… received powers. People who seemed entirely average to the rest of the population, but his grandmother did interviews with them, and they were always people who had this _intense_ need to protect others. Someone they loved, or even someone they just met. I’m talking _any_ people, doctors, farmers, even soldiers, who had a ridiculously pronounced protective streak. Like you, babe.” 

Maggie can hardly make out Alex’s face in the darkness, but she gives her a quick kiss. The wind weaves through both of their hair, whirling it around in the cool night air.

“You don’t have any fighter powers. You can’t hurt anyone with them. Alex Danvers, elite agent and badass, and all you’ve got are…” Maggie smiles widely. This is crazy. But they’re a crazy bunch of people, this family, and Maggie’s crazy in love with all of them. The confused woman in front of her, most of all. “… healing powers. You can unbreak things, Alex. Mend them. Maybe even people.” 

There’s a silence floating between them, but it only lasts a second. Alex lifts a hand to her forehead, pressing her fingers to her skin.

“This is too much for me, Maggie,” she complains. “I like protecting my sister, and that’s why I can rebuild an _entire_ fucking house?”

“Yeah, okay, it’s far-fetched,” Maggie admits. “But, Alex, don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it. Every time Kara goes into another coma, every time J’onn gets hurt, every time I get bruises on the job, don’t pretend you haven’t sat beside our beds and thought about how badly you want to be able to _do something._ ” 

“Of course,” Alex says helplessly. “But _everyone_ feels that way. I mean, no one likes seeing people they love suffer.” 

“Then maybe, one day, everyone will be able to heal,” Maggie answers softly. “But for now, here, there’s just you. I love you.” She wraps her arms around Alex, and Alex melts into her, starved for touch as she always is. Her soft, soft wife. Her wife with a gun and a thousand fighting skills and the power to mend the world. “Please come home.”

“I love you too, Maggie,” Alex mumbles into her hair. “I’m so home with you, always. You know that, right? I feel enough with you.”

And now, finally, Maggie lets the heat behind her eyes well up, lets the tears wet Alex’s shirt. “Don’t ever do that again,” she whispers, scared her voice will break if she speaks any louder. “Stop throwing yourself off fucking buildings, Danvers, especially if your sister isn’t there to catch you.”

“Maybe I will,” Alex laughs. The sound makes Maggie’s heart soar.

They break away from the hug, smiling like idiots, both with tear tracks on their dirty cheeks.

“You know,” Alex says, her thoughts written clear all over her eyes like tiny galaxies of stars. “You should text Kara and J’onn, and maybe stay here with me for the night? It’s quiet, and the house won’t collapse any second anymore.”

There’s already another smile hiding in Maggie’s mouth, but she suppresses it for now, until Alex interrupts herself, and frowns. “Wait no, scratch that, Mags, we’ll get cold. We don’t want you getting sick until I know for sure I could cure you, right?”

“Yeah, so,” Maggie says, rummaging through her backpack. “I brought blankets.” She finally frees one of them, holding it up in the air.

Alex raises an eyebrow at her.

“In my defense, I thought we’d have a longer discussion, but you kind of ruined that when you fell off the roof.”

“Good I did that, then—”

Maggie glares at her. “Too soon, Danvers.” She throws her phone at her. “You call your sister, okay? Tell her she can wake us up tomorrow at five a.m. if she wants to check up on you, but she’s gotta let us sleep those precious few hours first.”

Alex’s expression morphs into her big sister one, concerned, protective, the exact kind of selflessness that had seemingly prompted the universe to give her something so grand, so huge, Maggie is sure it’ll save the world.

When she’d been little, she’d stopped believing in God, in fate, in destiny, in any good universal forces at all. But meeting Alex, marrying Alex, had shifted all that for her. Maggie hadn’t been empty when they’d met; her love for Alex hadn’t filled her up. It had made her grow, though. It had made her heart extend to a size she’d never known could fit into her chest.

The way she loves Alex, sincerely, fully, happily, Maggie had never loved anyone. It’s a gift. And knowing that that love is returned just as entirely, just as beautifully, is more of a wonder than Maggie had ever thought she’d get.

That Alex Danvers, protective, selfless, loving Alex, now has healing powers is just the last proof that the universe is indeed mighty, and that it is kind.

“What if Kara wants me to come over right now?” Alex asks, concerned.

“Then we will, sweetie,” Maggie answers. “Don’t worry, okay? Just ask.”

Alex smiles, relieved. “Okay. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Maggie starts preparing their bed beneath the stars. Alex’s conversation with Kara is long, but there’s no heat to it, no argument. Maggie is tired, and when her eyes start dropping close, she snuggles into the blankets. She’s cleared the pebbles away, and underneath is bare concrete, still a little warm from the sunny day. Maggie begins drifting off to sleep.

And just before she’s entirely out cold, she feels Alex slipping in beside her, whispering how Kara and J’onn are going to come get them in a few hours. Whispering how beautiful Maggie is, how Alex is sorry, how she’s thankful. Maggie doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she can barely hear her. She’s so tired. 

She doesn’t see Alex smile, but she does feel the gentle kiss on her forehead.

In her wife’s arms, Maggie finally succumbs to the gentle darkness of her dreams.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Sara" by Fleetwood Mac.
> 
> This is my first contribution to Sanvers week - Alex's powers are inspired by what Chyler said in an interview, how it'd be nice for her to be able to heal people. Now she can!  
> I hope you enjoyed, I'd love to know how I did :)


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